"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."

Voltaire

As late summer brings long evenings and cooler breezes to DC, we hope that you're feeling passionate and effective in the work you do.

We at Common Ground are also feeling turned on, especially as we've got almost a solid month here at home in Washington!

That said, it's been a very busy summer: over the past few months, we've worked with more than 15 organizations in 10 states and four countries, flying over 55,000 miles. It's been remarkably satisfying, and the range of work has engaged new areas of expertise and inspired us to bring several extremely talented collaborators into our project teams.

While we've continued to conduct diversity, leadership, fundraising, and Board training for a number of clients, our focus this summer has also been on helping larger organizations make strategic decisions and search out creative new ways to fulfill their mission-critical goals.

We've also continued our work in strategic communications and grassroots activism, this time working with the non-profit Nehemiah Corporation of America in an effort to save downpayment assistance (DPA) programs that bring homeownership within reach of responsible, hard-working, middle-class Americans.

This has included designing, launching, and supporting a grassroots web 2.0 participation platform, www.DPAgroundswell.org. In just the first month, the site and the work that it coordinates among DPA supporters nationwide have been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNBC, Reuters, and others; and the site has been visited more than 130,000 times.

We've criss-crossed the United States and sampled the local cuisine in more than a dozen states working with the Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund, Child Development Centers, the Knight and Echoing Green Foundations, and many other wonderful organizations. We've continued to work with the dedicated international team of Child Helpline International in Amsterdam, and look forward to our next engagement with Utrecht-based CHOICE.

We worked extensively with the National Civilian Community Corps--one outstanding piece of the fabric of Americorps--which creates domestic service opportunities for 1,200 young Americans each year in education, disaster relief, public safety, and other areas of unmet need. After having been there for the beginning of AmeriCorps almost 15 years ago, you can imagine how excited we get whenever we have the opportunity to support this amazing program.

The next few months will have us abroad as often as not, with exciting work on four continents!.

We're thrilled to work with such diverse, talented, passionate people in so many amazing places. We're grateful every day for the challenges and victories we experience through our work and look forward to meeting new people and keeping in close touch with our existing friends and colleagues.

Speaking of colleagues, a close member of our team, Noah Isserman, will be leaving the States in September for Cambridge University (UK). He'll be conducting graduate work in economic geography, and was named a Gates Cambridge Scholar (regarded as Cambridge's answer to the Rhodes program at Oxford) and an Evan Carroll Commager Fellow. Although we'll miss seeing him in the office, he'll continue to work with us on our growing list of international projects. We wish him all the best in his research!

Many of you have also inquired about John Palinski, our operations manager during 2007. John is now working as a full-time staffer for the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania. We were sorry to see him go, but thrilled that he is following his passion.

We hope that each of you, regardless of your political beliefs, have similar success in contributing your time, talent and treasure to issues or candidates you believe in. We hope your summer has been full of inspiration in your work and time with those you care about. We remain grateful that the people we work with and the challenges that we face inspire our passion--we wish you the same good fortune and a wonderful late summer!

If you haven't visited our main website yet, we hope you'll also take a look there. When you get to our site, go to the login area under "Members" on the left, and enter the email address where you are receiving this and then create a password.

After that simple step, you'll have access to dozens of fully downloadable resources (many new resources just added!) to help you in your work. You'll also be able to view our snapshots gallery; and we'll be able to involve you directly in our cutting-edge work around the world!

Tell A Friend

More than 90% of all of our work this year has come from your direct referrals and for that, we are overwhelmed with gratitude. Thank You!

If you have a colleague who could benefit from knowing about our work and our free social profit resources, please feel free to forward them this email (Click "Forward this email" below).

If they are interested, they'll be able to sign-up, otherwise, we'll leave them alone. You have our word!

We can't wait for you to get involved in our online community! For almost two decades, Common Ground Consulting LLC has been providing mission-critical consulting services to social profit organizations. We look forward to strengthening our relationship with you.

Remember, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." (Harry S. Truman)

In Community, Craig